The Iraq War Didn’t Inspire the “Arab Spring”

In an otherwise excellent review of the costs of the Iraq war, Robert Merry makes an unnecessary concession to the dead-enders:

Some argue that the Iraq invasion inspired the Arab Spring, leading to the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt, Zine el-Abinine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Probably true [bold mine-DL].

This isn’t “probably true.” It is an argument concocted by people desperate to vindicate one of the most failed policy agendas of recent memory by linking completely unrelated later events to the decision to invade Iraq. One could much more easily make the case that the invasion of Iraq reinforced the political status quo almost everywhere else in the region. The chaos and bloodshed of post-invasion Iraq provided authoritarian rulers everywhere with a useful cautionary tale of what would happen to their countries if they experienced sudden political change. The invasion inspired fear of regime change in the region and it associated ideas of liberalization and democratization with the ruin of an entire country. One can question whether the “Arab Spring” is quite what enthusiastic observers imagined a year ago, but there is no question that the decision to invade Iraq had nothing to do with its beginnings.

MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR

Hide 5 comments

5 Responses to The Iraq War Didn’t Inspire the “Arab Spring”

Why would you NOT want to emulate the shining city on a hill that is Baghdad? Indeed, one truly wonders why Cheney, Wolfowitz, Kristol, Hannity, et.al, haven’t all chosen to live the remainder of their lives in the bastion of freedom they helped create?

Actually, it was. The entire reason for the Iraq war was to promote democracy. This is proven through The PNAC. Read their 3rd key principal. It has already been proven that WMDs and Saddam’s links to al Queda were used as “false pretenses.” Do some research.

The link might be tenuous at best but there must be some credir given to the US invasion of Iraq as an inspiration for so many regimes to be taken down or threatened at once. The kernel lies in the US effort to promote a Muslim democracy in Iraq and the conduct of our soldiers who expoused American values in almost every interaction with the Iraqi people.
When mass media and word of mouth got around the Arab world that many Iraqis actually really liked the Americans and are grateful for this chance of freedom as well as the millions of Arabs who live in America and already report back to loved ones about how great America is, then the kernel of freedom was planted and began to sprout.
Much more powerful factors contributed to the Arab Spring but the Invasion of Iraq certainly contributed.
The democracy of Iraq is still standing and the worst case scenarios of our withdrawal haven’t been realized although the situation is still very tenuous.